


Strange Creatures

by lyricwritesprose



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen, Pencils In the Margins, St. James's University Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-21
Updated: 2019-09-21
Packaged: 2020-10-25 07:45:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20720642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyricwritesprose/pseuds/lyricwritesprose
Summary: Mickey and Martha are looking for an alien at a university.  They find the Doctor.  But how can they be sure of him, when the alien they're looking for can invade a person's body?





	Strange Creatures

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Anonymous](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anonymous/gifts).

“Right,” Mickey said. “Right. Strategy. How do we find an alien hidden in a student?”

Martha was paging through the St. James’s class list. “We attend a few classes. See if we can spot anything odd.”

Mickey grimaced. “Never saw myself attending university.” He envisioned the students—white, of course, and clean-cut, and educated at Eton or someplace posh, all looking down on him for not knowing something that was obvious to them. Not that he  _ needed _ their approval, but—but.

Martha knew him well enough to read the grimace. “It isn’t like some fancy dinner where you use the wrong fork and they throw you out,” she said. “The thing about university is that you could wear a bathrobe for an entire semester and people would just think, ‘Oh, there goes Bathrobe Man.’ Actually happened my second semester. The year after, he added a hat.”

Mickey digested this. “Sure he wasn’t an alien?”

“Not  _ completely _ sure, but things like that happen.”

“So, this plan, where we look around for something odd . . .”

Martha sighed. “Point taken.” She stopped scrolling for a moment. “The problem with the Tiriskil is that they really are excellent at hiding. The Rutans made them for infiltration. You know, take over a body, turn it into a spy, eventually take over a planet. They can take someone over just by touching them. The thing is, they were  _ so _ good at disappearing that the Rutans lost track of them.”

“What do they look like when they’re not possessing someone?”

“A bunch of blue threads, apparently. But nobody ever sees them like that. Sometimes, apparently, you can see a trace of bright blue in their victims’ eyes.”

“If I were a Tiriskil,” Mickey said, “I’d pick a victim who already had blue eyes. So we can maybe rule out half the students. More.”

Martha nodded. “The Tiriskil won’t have all the memories of the student it inhabits. Surface level stuff, but no emotions to go with it. So they’ll withdraw from their friends a bit. They— _ what.” _

Mickey, alarmed by the tone, slid over to look over her shoulder. “What?”

Martha pointed wordlessly at the screen.

The class was listed as  _ Introduction to Astronomy. _

The teacher was listed as  _ Doctor. _

“You’re kidding me,” Mickey said flatly.

“Can you think of anyone else who could talk a university into not listing them by name?”

“No, but—but—staying in one place for a semester! That’s not happening, is it?”

“Not unless there was something  _ really _ important,” Martha acknowledged.

“What do we do?”

Martha closed her laptop with a snap. “We go to Introduction to Astronomy.”

§ 

Introduction to Astronomy was in a huge lecture hall. Mickey had seen lecture halls like this in every TV piece he had ever seen about university (which wasn’t many, to tell the truth; he preferred football or things with fast cars in them). As Martha had promised, nobody took notice of the two of them.

Mickey tried to look around discreetly. If he were a Tiriskil, he would be aggressively normal. Normal clothes, normal hair, normal everything. So he could probably rule out the girl in front of them with the bright pink hair, and the person of indeterminate gender with the knee-high stripy socks, and the incredibly hung-over bloke—no, he had brown eyes, he was off the list anyway.

He wondered if there was a way to interrupt the Tiriskil’s control. Broadcast an anti-Tiriskil signal, and one person on campus would either try to get help or go into screaming hysterics, and that would be a lot easier than looking for someone too normal. But it was rarely that easy.

Unless maybe the Doctor . . .

No, that was getting ahead of himself. At the moment, he didn’t even know that it  _ was _ the Doctor. It wasn’t impossible that there were two nameless blokes running around flaunting the fact that they had a degree. (A degree in  _ what, _ Mickey had never been sure. Disaster? Miracles? Pie-making?)

There was a note from an electric guitar, hanging in the air and vibrating, and the lecture hall gradually went quiet. Mickey thought,  _ what in the world— _ Was the lecturer actually going to make an entrance to a guitar solo?

He was wrong. The lecturer made an entrance  _ playing _ a guitar solo.

Mickey revised  _ what in the world _ to a more obscene variant of the same sentiment.

Halfway through what was shaping up to be a really good guitar solo, the lecturer put his hand over the strings, muting them instantly, and said, “Rhythm! Rhythm underlies everything.”

He was, at least,  _ weird _ enough to be the Doctor. But he wasn’t what Mickey had been expecting.

For starters, he was old. Old and tall and skinny, with flyaway hair. Although, between the guitar and the clothing and the way he moved, he gave off the energy of a younger man. That was Doctorish enough. Human ages didn’t really apply to the Doctor; he was, literally, beyond them. And he appeared to be talking about music, not astronomy, unless he was making some very round-about point about string theory or god-only-knew-what—that was Doctorish. The Scottish accent wasn’t entirely impossible. The dark glasses—heaven only knew what those were about. Mickey leaned over to Martha. “Does the Doctor know how to play guitar?” he whispered.

“How should I know? He knows more than I ever had a chance to find out. Drop him in any bizarre situation and he’d know something about it.”

This was true.

“Music, when you go back to its roots, is rhythm. Tap out the rhythm of Happy Birthday, and you’ll recognize it. Play the notes, without the proper rhythm, and it becomes a different tune. Rhythm is—” He stopped.

Not even moving. Staring up at the audience.

“He’s looking straight at us,” Mickey hissed.

“I can’t tell. Maybe.”

After a long moment, long enough that some of the audience started shifting restlessly, the lecturer resumed again, mid-sentence.

Odd enough to be the Doctor, and he had seen them. And recognized them.

Right, Mickey decided. We’re seeing him after class.

Which still seemed to be about music.

§ 

By the time the lecture was over, Mickey had come up with a new, dire suspicion. He scribbled it down on a scrap of paper and passed it to Martha.  _ Sunglasses — Tiriskil? _

Beside him, he could feel Martha slowly go tense all over.

He didn’t  _ know _ what color the Doctor’s eyes were, or were supposed to be. They had been blue once, and brown the next time. But if they had been brown this time, and the Tiriskil had caught him, he might be wearing sunglasses to hide the fact. And the Doctor was a valuable enough target for a Tiriskil to forget all that stuff about blending in. Had he recognized them because he was the Doctor, or recognized them because they had taken care of the other two Tiriskil?

“Right,” Mickey said, “the way to deal with a Tiriskil is a massive dose of fluconazole.” He was carrying two ampules, Martha was carrying two. Martha had explained that a Tiriskil was, in a lot of ways, similar to a fungus, and had used a lot of terms that Mickey had forgot by now—not that Martha wouldn’t explain the technicalities to him again if he asked, but sometimes he was content to sit back and let her be the brains of the operation. Mickey had realized, somewhat to his surprise, that he was not an idiot and could be downright clever when it came to practical stuff, but  _ Martha _ was brilliant. “So—how do we know that stuff isn’t poisonous to the Doctor?”

Martha let out a breath. "We don't."

"Great. How do we find out if the Tiriskil is in there?"

"I don't know that either. Talk to him?"

"Same plan, then," Mickey said.

"Same plan, only more cautiously."

They fell into step and made their way up the stairs to the Doctor’s office.

§ 

The door was half open when they got there. Mickey knocked on it.

There was no response.

“Anyone here?”

Nothing.

He pushed the door open, and found his gaze instantly drawn to the corner of the room, and let out his breath all at once. Well, that answered one question.

It was  _ weird, _ seeing the TARDIS again. Like a shot of adrenaline. Like someone grabbing your hand and telling you to run. His life was hardly mundane now, but there was something about that blue shape that whispered,  _ forget what you think is possible. It doesn’t even apply. _

There was an Out of Order sign on it. Mickey stared at that, and approached.

Martha was right behind him. “How can the TARDIS be out of order?”

“She’s old,” Mickey reflected. “Very old. If something broke that he couldn’t fix . . .” Then he would probably keep it with him, a painful reminder of a more free time, stuck in the day-to-day grind like the next person—it hurt, in a way, to think of the Doctor like that.

It would hurt the Doctor to live like that.

“It’s mostly there to keep people from trying the door,” the Doctor said, behind them.

Mickey and Martha turned simultaneously.

He didn’t have his dark glasses on. His eyes were blue. “You can’t be here,” the Doctor said. “You  _ really _ can’t be here.”

“Why are  _ you _ here?” Mickey said.

“I’m undercover. In disguise.”

“Using the name ‘the Doctor.’”

“It may not be a perfect disguise. What are you doing here? Weren’t you off protecting the Earth?”

“This bit of the Earth needs protecting too, sometimes,” Mickey said.

Martha stepped forward and looked up at him. A very close, studying look into his eyes. The Doctor returned it.

He looked old, Mickey thought. Well, of course he looked old, his body was old, but right now Mickey was getting the distinct impression that this Doctor was  _ significantly older _ than the one he’d known.

Then the Doctor stepped forward, and Martha stepped back.

The Tiriskil could possess people by touch.

“What’s wrong,” the Doctor said, in a dire tone of someone who knew something was very wrong.

“I need you to say something so that I know that it’s you.” Martha’s voice was steady.

“You’re staring at my eyes. You wouldn’t do that if you thought I was  _ him. _ So it’s something else. Question: what hostile force is identifiable through the eyes? Answer: a Tiriskil. You think there’s a Tiriskil on campus.”

“That’s good,” Martha said. “It still doesn’t prove that you’re not the one who was taken.”

“In the far future, cats will be people. That’s not a thing that a Tiriskil would know. They don’t have time travel.”

“Yeah,” Mickey said, “but if a Tiriskil has  _ you, _ it has your surface memories. That’s surface memories.”

The Doctor regarded him. Then he said, “When we first met, you called me a thing.”

And he still hadn’t been forgiven for it, was that it? The Doctor would forgive villains and murderers, but not Mickey, who had just been a kid, and more flat-out  _ terrified _ than he’d been in his entire life—why? Because he wasn’t  _ worth _ forgiving?

No. No. Distraction. “Still surface-level stuff.”

“Yes, but this isn’t. I didn’t disinvite you because I was insulted. I disinvited you because I didn’t want to think about whether you were right.”

Mickey stared at him.

“It was just after the War,” the Doctor said. “The Time War. The things I did to stay alive—you don’t walk away from that. It follows you. Hides behind your eyes, gets to you every time you close them. I didn’t want to be reminded, and anyone who looked at me with fear in their eyes was a reminder.”

Mickey considered carefully. He knew the Doctor had war issues. Rose had given him a lecture, when he first came on board the TARDIS, about how he should never suggest using a gun, how something about shooting the bad guy (however necessary it might seem) grabbed deep down into the Doctor’s past and twisted, that it wasn’t even so much a moral stance as a gut-deep horror. The Doctor had Seen Things, and probably Done Things. He had never thought to connect that to himself.

It was true that he couldn’t have mustered Rose’s easy trust. Not until he knew the man better, and possibly not until he turned into the second Doctor Mickey had known, who was less prickly, more easily charming.

“Yeah,” Mickey said. “All right. That works.”

Martha looked at him, and nodded, and made herself relax.

“Good.” The Doctor started moving again, all familiar irrepressible energy, just a different shape. “Let’s make a Tiriskil detector.”

§ 

The Tiriskil detector involved a kettle, a length of rubber hose, and a pair of tongs. Neither Mickey nor Martha were surprised. Mickey found himself promptly drafted to hold the kettle part, and wasn’t surprised about that either.

A professor and two students wandering around campus with a strange assemblage of junk, the professor apparently dowsing with the tongs, should probably have attracted more attention than it did. Mickey nodded awkwardly to the first few people who stared at them, but after a while, he stopped bothering. Nobody was interfering with them. Nobody was following them.

Either Martha was right about eccentric behavior on campus being wildly unremarkable, or the Doctor did stuff like this  _ all the time. _

Or both.

Subtle vibrations in the tongs led them to the library. Martha held the door while the Doctor, followed by Mickey with the kettle, hurried inside.

The librarian looked up, started to say something, saw who it was, and visibly decided that it was none of his business. Another tally mark for the  _ Doctor regularly did this _ column.

The tongs led them back into high, close shelves. Mickey, who had never been in a university library before, found it oppressive. Limited exits, things could get very close to you just by being on the other side of the shelves, shelves could conceivably be pushed over onto you—not great.

He wouldn’t have thought about that sort of thing before he and Martha started their two-person troubleshooting operation (which bore absolutely no resemblance to the A-team, the next person who asked Mickey to say  _ anything _ about pitying fools was going to wake up on a Tritovore sewage collection freighter). But one of the costs of learning to handle yourself in combat is that you learned to assess situations for combat, and once you started, you didn’t always stop.

Some people might have said that Mickey had become badass. He didn’t feel badass. More vulnerable, if anything, worrying about the possibility that this time they would screw up and the Rutans would send a war planetoid or the Sontarans would gas the place. Or, as in this situation, the consequences wouldn’t be dire for the earth, but it would be nightmarish for a single individual.

A single individual like the girl who was looking up at them in startlement. She was dark-skinned, Asian, and wearing tinted blue glasses.

_ Gotcha, _ Mickey thought and took out his ampule of fluconazole. Beside him, Martha was doing the same.

“Just a moment.” The Doctor held up his hand. “What’s your name?”

Oh. Right. Doctor rules. You had to at least  _ try _ mercy. He was perfectly capable of making a nuclear device out of a toaster oven, but it was a matter of principle never to start there.

“Amrita,” the woman said.

“Not  _ her _ name,  _ your _ name. The parasite.”

The girl stiffened. Then she said slowly, “She’s not a parasite.”

“Biologically speaking, a symbiote. An organism which increases the overall health of its partner. Ethically speaking? You steal free will, you trap someone inside their own skull, you use their body as your puppet, and you leave them tortured and aware while you do it. The technical term is  _ monster.” _

The girl opened and closed her mouth twice. Then she said, “That’s not what’s going on.”

“If you get out of her,” the Doctor said, “I’ll find you somewhere that you can live without possessing another being. I have no idea where and I have no idea how, but I’ll find it. I realize this isn’t entirely your fault. The Rutans made you like this. But someone has to stop it. Someone has to break the chain.”

“Listen to me,” the girl said, “it’s not what you think.”

“If you  _ don’t _ get out of her, we’ll destroy you. And then any others of your kind on Earth.”

_ “Listen _ to me! This is me. Amrita Chandran. Eddie is  _ listening, _ sure, but she’s not in control. She doesn’t do that. She’s got ethical objections.”

The Doctor seemed slightly stunned. Mickey said the only thing he could think of, which was, “The Tiriskil’s name is Eddie?”

“She said they don’t have names. Apparently they were supposed to be spies, and there was a whole thing about not developing their own identities. I named her after a movie.”

“Why would someone agree to share their body?” Martha asked.

Amrita’s mouth tightened. “It’s called mastocytosis. You wouldn’t have heard of it.”

“I’ve heard of it,” Martha said. “It’s rare. Not curable, but there are treatments less extreme than sharing your body with an alien.”

“Most of ‘em have side effects for me. It’s worth it, not to have my body falling apart on me anymore. And besides, she’s a friend.”

“How do we know if you’re telling the truth, though?” Mickey said. “Could be just the Tiriskil talking.  _ I’d _ make up a lie like that, if I was facing—” Probably best not to say  _ if I was facing the Doctor. _ It was always possible she didn’t know. “Someone who wanted to see off enemies and be nice at the same time.”

Amrita faltered. “I don’t know. Isn’t there some sort of test, or—”

“The Tiriskil were designed for infiltration,” the Doctor said. “There’s no test. The only way to be sure—” He stopped.

“What?” Martha said, when he didn’t go on.

“Is to look directly at her mind. Their minds.”

“Yeah,” Mickey said, “but you’d have to touch them. Wouldn’t you? I mean, isn’t that the way it works, that you would have to touch them?”

Amrita gave the Doctor a hard stare. “You really,  _ really _ don’t have any room to talk about aliens hiding out on campus, if you’re talking about doing that.”

“Yes,” the Doctor said, “I would have to touch them.”

“Giving the Tiriskil an opportunity to jump to you,” Martha said. “Can Tiriskil control two bodies at once?”

“No,” Amrita said.

“Possibly,” the Doctor corrected. “For a short time. There are rumors. So if I do this, I would have to verify my identity to you again. I’m not going to think too hard about how I would do that, so that the Tiriskil doesn’t pick it up if it invades me—”

_ “She,” _ Amrita corrected, “and she  _ won’t.” _

“But you two have to be the judge of whether I’m me.”

“Can’t we just stick him with the drug?” Mickey suggested, waving an ampule.

“Anti-fungal?” The Doctor shook his head. “I don’t know what it would do. I’ve never been injected with a human anti-fungal before. It would definitely kill a Tiriskil. It might kill me.”

And if the Tiriskil took him over, they would have to inject him anyway. “Your call whether you want to risk this,” Mickey said.

The Doctor looked at him. “If I don’t, you’ll have to kill the Tiriskil. Who  _ might _ not be hostile.”

“Yeah, I’m getting that, and I don’t see another way out  _ either, _ but I’m just saying, it’s your call whether you want to risk this. Just because I put my life on the line sometimes, doesn’t give me the right to risk someone else.”

“Sometimes you have to,” the Doctor said. “But not today. This is my choice.” He stepped closer to Amrita. “And your choice. Granted, I can’t see a way to verify your identity without it, but you can always say no.”

Amrita swallowed. “I’m ready. Exactly what do I do?”

“Just hold still,” the Doctor said, “and let me put my hands on your face.” He did so, gently.

Amrita closed her eyes. Mickey didn’t think she had meant to. There was something unnervingly relaxed about her expression.

The Doctor's expression changed. He looked almost confused. "You're not lying to me." He sounded as if he was talking to himself. "Hardly know what to do when they're not lying to me. Sharing a body equitably. The amount of intimacy you need to do that—you realize, of course, that if you go on like this, you’re going to become unsure where one begins and the other ends. You’ll find yourself blended together, like paint. Is that what you want? Is that really your choice?”

“I feel good this way,” Amrita said, sounding drugged. “She makes me feel good. Not just my body. I think I love her.”

“And you?”

Amrita’s voice changed subtly. “You’re in my thoughts. You know that I don’t deserve a second chance. Do you understand how incredible it is, that I’m getting one anyway?”

There was a pause. “Yes,” the Doctor said finally. “I do.”

Amrita slumped. The Doctor caught her and lowered her to the ground, fast asleep.

“Can’t have her remembering I’m here,” he said, as he turned back to Martha and Mickey. “Even though she doesn’t mean any harm.”

Mickey and Martha both had their ampules out. “Doctor,” Mickey said, “we need proof.”

“Right. Proof.”

“Not surface-level stuff,” Mickey added. “Something that means something.”

“Something that means something.” He was quiet for a long moment.

“Doctor,” Mickey said warningly, raising the ampule.

The Doctor looked at Martha. “You shouldn’t have had to see me forgive him,” he said quietly.

There was a silence as Mickey realized what they were talking about. The Master. The year he had lived through (or died during), but would never remember, because it had all been rewound.

Martha didn’t like to talk about it. Sometimes, though, she had to. And Mickey was one of very few people who could hear that he was missing a year of time and say,  _ what happened, then, _ rather than  _ you’re mental. _ It definitely wasn’t the only thing that had brought them together, but it had been significant, at least at first: the fact that they could  _ talk _ to each other about their lives.

“You can forgive who you want to forgive,” Martha said, just as quietly. “I never did ask, what you were to each other before, but being the last—I  _ understand, _ Doctor. I do.”

“Of course I can forgive who I want to forgive. That’s how forgiveness works. But you, you  _ don’t _ have to forgive anyone. No matter what. And after everything you went through—you shouldn’t have had to see it. That’s all.”

Martha put away her ampule. “And lie to each other about it? No. I can hate the Master with all my soul, and you can—feel differently. It won’t destroy our trust in each other unless you let him harm anyone else, and that’s hardly an issue now, is it?”

“No,” the Doctor agreed. “Not an issue anymore.”

Mickey put his ampule away as well. “We’re good, then?”

“Except for the small matter that  _ no-one can know I’m here,” _ the Doctor said.

“We’ll keep your secret,” Mickey said.

The Doctor gave him a skeptical look.

“Look, what else are you going to do? Mindwipe us? Neither of us would stand still for  _ that.” _ Mickey was watching the Doctor’s face, and realized with a shock that he had considered it. “You’re looking at the most impressive survivor on the entire planet and the guy who, most of the time, manages to keep up with her. If one of us gets caught, the other one will rip apart anything we have to, to get to them. We’re not going to give your secret away voluntarily, and the odds are pretty good that we won’t do it  _ involuntarily. _ You’re just going to have to trust us. It isn’t like you haven’t trusted your life to Martha before.”

The nod was slow in coming, but it came. “My life, and the world,” the Doctor agreed. “It’s—good. To have people I can trust with the world, while I do this.”

“Always,” Martha said.


End file.
